Stages’ Zero Hour channels Mostel’s volatile presence

Playwright Jim Brochu didn’t have to look far to find the ideal star for Zero Hour, the solo play he’s written about famed actor Zero Mostel.

In the play’s Houston debut at Stages, Brochu himself comes probably as close as any living actor could to conveying the explosive personality of the extravagantly gifted and maddeningly unpredictable Mostel. The piece is frank about its intentions, both as a valentine to Mostel and a vehicle for Brochu.

Brochu supplies a suitable framework. It’s July 1977 and Mostel, who considers himself a painter who acts, allows a young reporter into his art studio to interview him about his life and career. The fictitious interview, of course, will prove a summation of sorts — for Mostel, though at the time about to start rehearsals for a new play, would die just two months later.

In Zero Hour, Mostel immediately takes charge, volunteering to supply the first question, then modifying the suggestion. “Why don’t I just ask all the questions I think you should ask me?” It makes perfect sense that the cowed reporter is neither seen nor heard, since Mostel would steal the spotlight anyway.

He also instantly reveals his characteristic way of changing mood abruptly and arbitrarily, going from welcoming to attacking, from whispers to yells. Was it just Mostel’s way of keeping everyone, from audiences to interviewers, on their toes?

Brochu-as-Mostel recalls his youth, his marriage to wife Kate, his parents disowning him for marrying outside their Jewish faith, his thwarted ambition to be recognized as a painter, his tendency to improvise jokes in his work as a museum guide, which led to his first gigs as a stand-up comic, then to stage roles.

Signed to a Hollywood contract by MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, Mostel has scarcely finished his first film when he antagonizes Mayer by skipping the party where he’s been commanded to entertain all the studio big shots, and performing at a longshoremen’s benefit instead. The episode demonstrates how Mostel could be his own worst enemy.

But he soon has worse things to worry about, as he finds himself blacklisted for his leftist political affiliations and ordered to appear before the House Committee on Un-American activities. In the play, Mostel keeps insisting he won’t tell the story of his dearest friend, actor Philip Loeb, who committed suicide after his life was destroyed by the blacklist. But of course, he does.

This whole blacklisting chapter gets the most stage time, and at a few points, its nakedly emotional tone just skirts the maudlin. Still, it’s a compelling subject and the actual scene of Mostel facing down “the committee” is handled effectively.

Mostel lives through the blacklist, and is just getting his career back on track, when he is struck by a bus. Barely avoiding having his leg amputated, his recovery requires months of hospitalization. Yet he goes on to his 1960s stage triumphs in Rhinoceros, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof. Ironically, on the last two, he finds himself working again with director Jerome Robbins, whom he’d reviled for “naming names” before HUAC. The big speech putting down Robbins at a Forum rehearsal feels a bit unnecessary.

But if Zero Hour sometimes lapses into self-serving grandstanding, it usually remains entertaining. For all the breast-beating pathos, it’s pretty consistently funny, thanks to a steady stream of jokes, some of them obvious, but most of them potent and expertly delivered. “Jewish dietary laws are very strict — pork and shellfish may only be eaten in Chinese restaurants.”

Through it all, there’s the spectacle of the hefty, volatile Brochu channeling Mostel’s wild mood swings, crazy humor and righteous anger. He’s self-pitying, ridiculous, exasperating and inspired — as he proclaims in one of those grandstanding set pieces, a creature of contractions.

Perhaps not quite as uniquely — but like Mostel, Brochu commands the stage.